The startling revelation came two days after police say Nikolas Cruz marched into his former high school and gunned down 17 people. In a statement, the FBI said it received a tip last month from “a person close to Nikolas Cruz” reporting concerns about him, specifically saying that he could potentially carry out a school shooting.

While this should have been investigated “as a potential threat to life … these protocols were not followed,” the bureau said in a statement.

“We are still investigating the facts,” Christopher A. Wray, the FBI director, said in the statement. “I am committed to getting to the bottom of what happened in this particular matter, as well as reviewing our processes for responding to information that we receive from the public.”This revelation made the Parkland shooting the third time in as many years that a mass shooter who terrorized Floridians had come to the bureau’s attention beforehand. In 2016, the FBI said it had previously investigated the man who gunned down 49 people at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Last year, authorities said a man charged with killing five people at the Fort Lauderdale airport had walked into an FBI office weeks earlier and made bizarre statements.

These are the people the gun grabbers say we should be trusting with all the power of life and death.

My entire adult life, I’ve considered the Bill of Rights inviolable – with the idea that they’re timeless principles, without which the idea of “Freedom” is pretty much meaningless. I took to heart the saying attributed to Ben Franklin – “He who would trade freedom for security deserves neither”.

But recent events have caused me, after much difficult thinking, to have a change of heart.

It’s time to change one of the Amendments in the BIll of Rights. Not *repeal* it – just change it. *To save lives*.

I’ll be announcing the amendment, and why, on the show tomorrow. 1PM on AM1280.

As this story shows – it can work; a grandmother turned in a grandson who was exhibiting some troubling signs:

According to police in Everett, Washington, the grandmother of Joshua Alexander O’Connor called 911 after finding disturbing journal entries that described how the 18-year-old was planning to attack his high school.

“Officers were also told the grandson had a rifle stored in a guitar case. As officers reviewed copies of the journal, they were alarmed at the statements and detailed plans to shoot students and use homemade explosive devices at ACES High School,” a statement from Everett police read.

“I need to make this count,” O’Connor reportedly wrote, according to the Daily Herald. “I’ve been reviewing many mass shootings/bombings (and attempted bombings) I’m learning from past shooters/bombers mistakes.”

Huh. Why, it’s almost like media coverage stokes their ambitions or something.

The YouTuber, 36-year-old Ben Bennight, alerted the FBI, emailing a screenshot of the comment and calling the bureau’s Mississippi field office. He also flagged the comment to YouTube, which removed it from the video.

Agents with the bureau’s Mississippi field office got back to him “immediately,” Bennight said, and conducted an in-person interview the following day, on Sept. 25.

“They came to my office the next morning and asked me if I knew anything about the person,” Bennight told BuzzFeed News. “I didn’t. They took a copy of the screenshot and that was the last I heard from them.”

Well, at least not while there was something that could be done:

FBI agents contacted Bennight again Wednesday, after a 19-year-old named Nikolas Cruz allegedly opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in South Florida, killing at least 17 people.

Nik Cruz fired at his victims for three uninterrupted minutes at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

He had an AR-15-pattern rifle (a Smith and Wesson M&P15) – but with three uninterrupted minutes, he could easily have killed that many people with any garden-variety handgun, a hunting rifle, a shotgun – anything.

Unless…

…unless one person – a teacher, a principal, a freaking janitor – had put some lead in his general direction. Broken him out of his narcissistic reverie with even the imminent threat of lethal resistance.

One lousy shot. Just one.

Think of the lives that oculd’ve been saved.

But no. To assuage the neo-religious faith that disarming the law-abiding hinders criminals, every adult in the building, like every adult at every school shooting (with two exceptions – here and here). ever.

MInneapolis’ “Resilience Officer” has departed, after seven months, after submitting no work product of any kind:

[Former DFL legislatore Kate] Knuth, an environmental educator and former DFL legislator, spent her first months in the job interviewing people and conducting a survey, but had not delivered any finished work product before she resigned.

Mychal Vlatkovich, a spokesman for Mayor Jacob Frey, said they’ve begun looking for a replacement and hope to hire someone by the end of March who will focus on the mayor’s goals. He said the mayor’s office did not ask Knuth to step down, but declined to answer whether she was allowed to continue in the position and referred further questions to Knuth and former City Coordinator Spencer Cronk, who is now the city manager of Austin, Texas.

I’ve always wondered what a “Resiliehce Officer” does. Reading the job title, I assumed it covered things like network security, hardening city communications against hacking and terrorism, and coming up with plans for responding to things like natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and winning college hockey titles.

The position is designed to reflect the priorities of the administration, and in this case we’re going to be focused more narrowly on expanding access to affordable housing, and the impact that would have on our other goals, including building an inclusive economy and strengthening police-community relations,” Vlatkovich said.

In other words, a “Resilience Officer” is in charge of making the city look like it’s trying to dooooooooo something about progressive “dog whistle” issues.

Kniuth’s job was apparently funded by a grant. But Saint Paul, not to be left behind by an urban progressive fad, is jumping on the hybrid bandwagon:

While St. Paul is not one of the 100 “resilient cities,” the city has hired former Council President Russ Stark as chief resilience officer. Stark, who starts on Thursday, will be paid a salary of $105,000 through the city’s general fund. The city of St. Paul says he will “promote sustainability strategies aimed at protecting Saint Paul families from the effects of climate change.”

People on social media have commentned “That doesn’t seem all that resilient”.

They miss the point.

The resilience is in the concept – which is “to transfer taxpayer dollars to the DFL’s political class”, keeping the likes of Knuth and Stark paid and fed and involved in “progressive” politics. It’s a part of institutional life in Minnesota, and the reason most “community non-profits” exist, and the reason getting elected as a DFL pol means never having to look for work again as long as you live.

According to the latest United Van Lines year-end list, the top five states people are leaving is made up mostly of liberal, Democrat infested states. Of the top five worst states, only the last, Kansas, has a GOP dominated government. The other four Illinois (a state that usually tops nearly every metric that marks a failed state), New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut are all hopelessly Democrat.

Another liberal state that is losing citizens faster than it is gaining replacements is the failed state of California. A recent Mises Institute report showed that California, New York, and Illinois were losing more citizens to other U.S. states far faster than the rest of the country.

Indeed, a recent report by San Francisco’s CBS affiliate noted that people are leaving the Bay area in droves because no one who isn’t a billionaire can afford to live there due to high taxes and exorbitant property costs.

On the other hand, another study showed that the top five states Americans are moving into were nearly all Republican states. with Idaho, Washington State, Nevada, Tennessee, and Alaska topping the list — Washington being the only Democrat-dominated state on that list.

It’s nothing new; it’s how Vermont, Colorado, and Edina Minnesota all went from solid conservative holdouts to Democrat cesspools.

Even this article seems concerned that SNAP recipients may be using food stamps to buy the cheapest food, which “isn’t healthy for them,” and the article even has to question, once again, are SNAP recipients consuming too much sugary beverages?

First things first: Berg’s 18th Law is in full effect. (“Nothing the media writes/says about any emotionally charged event – a mass shooting, a police shooting, anything – should be taken seriously for 48 hours after the original incident. It will largely be rubbish, as media outlets vie to “scoop” each other even on incorrect facts“). CNN has already fallen for one social media hoax on the subject.

After atrocities like the one that they’re still sorting out in Florida – a gun free zone with a cop on scene, no less – there’s usually a wave of people who take to social media to offer “thoughts and prayers” to the victims, their families and the community.

That wave is quickly followed by a wave of people say “Stuff the hopes and prayers! We need to dooooooooo something!”. That “something” is, inevitably, trample on the Constitution – in a way that won’t save one single life.

You want to trash the Constitution in a way that *could* save lives? Impose censorship over the mass media. Because spree killers use a variety of weapons – guns, machetes, gasoline, fertilizer – but they all 1 seek *immortality*. They want to be *famous*.

And who grants fame and immortality in our society? The media and its 24 hour news cycle.

So if you deprive a mentally unstable but violent person of one means to kill, they’ll find another. So why not deprive them of motive – their mass media eternal reward?

Now, the people howling “Stupid Christians! Doooooooooo Something!” would be largely but not entirely horrified at the thought of gagging the media after mass shootings. And no, it likely wouldn’t work complete.y – but it’d have much more effect on spree killings.

So at any rate – all of you howling at people asking for thoughts and prayers and asking people to dooooooo something? You’re less useful in the great scheme of things. Drop it.

1 Except, generally, terrorists. Does that include the San Bernardino and Little Rock murderers, and Omar Mateen? What am I, a psychiatrist?

I’m gonna stop just short of telling white people NOT to see it. To be clear, I hope this movie makes A BAZILLION GAFLILLION SCHMATRILLION dollars opening weekend, and wins every single award possible. Speaking to my fellow white people, though, can we please consider letting Black people have this joy without us ruining it for them with our presence?

We have ruined, and continue to ruin so much for Black folx.[That’s right. Folx. She is that dumb – Ed] Yes, often just by inserting ourselves where they are rightfully trying to enjoy their greatness in peace, and without our white nonsense.

Or, if you get tickets, and you notice it’s sold out, and some Black folx are outside bummed they weren’t able to get tickets, give your tickets to them and go to Applebee’s instead.

How very, very twee.

It just has to be tough, being both a honky and ˆ”authentic”. Well done.

Ms. Worthington: I’m going to exercise that greatest “white privilege” (I choose to call it “freedom”, and invite everyone of all races to partake in it) and go wherever I damn well want, do what I want, and mock your appropriation of the voice of American blacks. They don’t need your help.

The white paper was produced by Acting ATF Deputy Director Ronald B. Turk and dated on President Trump’s inauguration day, January 20, 2017. It says the agency should consider allowing gun dealers to sell across state lines, loosen restrictions on gun noise suppressors, and pull back on its scrutiny of gun shops.

“If I am missing the mark on a major issue or disregarding a major discussion point any feedback you have would be appreciated,” Turk wrote to the lobbyist, Mark Barnes, on January 9, 2017. “My hope is that the agency can demonstrate flexibility where appropriate and identify areas for further discussion, recognizing that solving everyone’s concerns on each side would be difficult.”

CNN also whimpers:

The documents on the drafting of the white paper, as provided by the ATF, do not reflect any input from gun-control groups.

Which stands to reaason; they are jointly and severally worthless; they provide no factual, moral or political value to any policy discussion on the issue. None of them.

We’re headed for another fight over Dreamers, illegal aliens brought into the country as minors by their parents. Democrats and RINOs like McCain want amnesty on the grounds that minors aren’t responsible for their actions so it’s humane to let them stay rather than force them to return to a country they never knew.

Okay, but there are about a million Dreamers. The instant you give citizenship to Dreamers, they can use family reunification rules to sponsor their parents for citizenship. Now we’re up to 3 million. That’s a lot of new Democrat voters.

Why are we having an amnesty discussion at all? Because the Dreamers came here without permission. How’d they do that? Strolled across the border. Why didn’t somebody stop them? Because there’s no wall on the border. Why not?

Look, there are only two possibilities. First one, Open Borders. Make the US border with Mexico as wide open like the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin – anybody can enter, thieves, gangsters, terrorists, without limitation. In that case, we shouldn’t bother with formal citizenship: everybody who stands on our soil is a citizen. The dirt will magically transform them from their culture to ours. In fact, why should they have to make the trip at all? Anybody with the spirit and desire to be an American should be able to vote for Democrats and receive welfare checks, regardless of where they in the world they live. No borders.

Second option, some people get in, but others do not. It doesn’t matter who does not, the fact some people are not allowed in brings up the most urgent question: how will you keep them out?

The Wall is too expensive? Fine, what’s your alternative proposal to keep them out? Electronic countermeasures, virtual wall, drones? Didn’t work to keep out the 3 million we’re going to amnesty – how will it work to keep out the next 3 million? 30 million? 300 million?

Prohibition without enforcement is functionally equivalent to acceptance. Either we have a border or we don’t. Either we keep undesirables out or we don’t. –

I think we ought to build The Wall to keep out undesirables. 65 other nations around the world agree with me. If you’ve got a better idea, let’s hear it. We’ve got about a week to decide before amnesty is given and the cycle starts all over again.

Joe Doakes

It is, to coin a phrase, a time for choosing. Is this a sovereign nation with a culture worth preserving, or not?

Nearly six years ago on this blog, we noted the 50th anniversary of the production of the final B52 Stratofortress – a plane whose design processs kicked off as the rubble from World War 2 was still smoking, which first flew in the early fifties, went into series production in 1952, and whose final example rolled off the line before I was born.

The Air Force has been working to replace the B52 – the BUFF Big Ugly Fat Fella) or BMF (Boeng Multirole Flight-platform), as its crews and support staff call it – almost since it first rolled off the production line.

First came the =B58 Hustler – a sleek, fast, incredibly flashy plane that broke all sorts of world records, and lasted maybe five years in front line service due to mechanical and electronic bugs and cost overruns.

The FB-111 was intended to augment the B-52 rather than supplant it; it was part of the strategic bomber fleet for perhaps a decade and a half before being retired.

The B1 and B1A? After a protracted, costly development dogged by systems issues and a left-leaning Congress that was drunk with pacifistic power after pulling the US out of Vietnam, the plane was downgraded into the more pedestrian but fairly successful B1B, currently gracing the skies of South Dakota from its home base near Rapid City – and will be for another fifteen years, according to the Air Force, retiring a decade or so before the original plan.

Same with the B2 “Spirit” – the first strategic “stealth” bomber, which will also be leaving service in the early 2030s.

“With an adequate sustainment and modernization focus, including new engines, the B-52 has a projected service life through 2050, remaining a key part of the bomber enterprise well into the future,” said Gen. Robin Rand, Air Force Global Strike Command commander, in a statement issued by the Air Force.

But today’s B-52 has evolved from the planes first flown in the ’50s. The Stratofortress has undergone numerous upgrades and modernization over the years, including the addition of an advanced communications system that displays real-time intelligence feeds overlaid on moving maps…The Air Force plan calls for the B-1s and B-2s to be “incrementally retired,” once enough [of the brand new, just-started-design] B-21s are operational. “If the force structure we have proposed is supported by the Congress, bases that have bombers now will have bombers in the future,” Wilson said. “They will be B-52s and B-21s.”

The B21, of course, will run into delays and overruns, and the B52 will (I predict) be in service through the 2070s.

Stassen-Berger will oversee the Register’s politics and policy team, which includes coverage of state government, health care, Iowa’s congressional delegation and the Iowa caucuses. She will start in mid-March.

Stassen-Berger has covered the Statehouse in St. Paul for 16 years. Most recently, she was the capitol bureau chief, as well as a reporter and columnist, for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. She has also served as a political writer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The Register doesn’t have quite the sheen it did thirty years ago – but it’s a great move for Stassen-Berger, and I wish her all the best.

No foreign leader has enjoyed coverage as good as North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong since Vogue profiled Asma al-Assad, first lady of Syria, back in 2011. (That was right before Assad’s regime killed tens of thousands of people and used chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war.) A sampling: Reuters: “North Korea has emerged as the early favorite to grab one of the Winter Olympics’ most important medals: the diplomatic gold.” CNN: “Kim Jong Un’s sister is stealing the show at the Winter Olympics!” Business Insider: “From her “side-eye” of US Vice President Mike Pence to hints at Korean unification, Kim has stolen the spotlight at the Winter Olympics.” Washington Post: “The ‘Ivanka Trump of North Korea’ captivates people in the South at the Olympics.”

All that is necessary to get the coastal media’s blessing is to be the opposite of Donald Trump.

Without whom this rapprochement, real or fabricated, would not be happening in the first place.

Granted that this crew sounds like a bunch of losers who probably ought to be off the streets, a few points about Minnesota law:

It is legal to own night vision goggles.

It is legal to make your own firearm as long as you don’t sell it. Homemade firearms do not require serial numbers.

It is legal to own a silencer, and to make one yourself, as long as you get the federal tax stamp. Possession itself is not illegal.

It is legal to own a semi-automatic replica of a submachine gun, such as the Uzi that fires one shot per trigger pull.

It is legal to own a real machine gun, if you have the tax stamp.

It is also legal to own a decommissioned rocket propelled grenade launcher (it might be legal to own a firing one, as long as you don’t have the ammo for it, I don’t know). The article doesn’t say which they had.

It is legal to have as many rounds of ammunition as you like.

It is legal to have a separate fire-proof room to store firearms and ammunition. And it’s legal to conceal that room from burglars.

An altered serial number on a gun is a crime and being a drug user in possession of a firearm is a crime. Those crimes are buried beneath the breathless recital of all the non-crimes.

There might be actual crimes here, or it could be a couple of minor offenses and a whole lot of politically correct posturing. It would be nice to have more intelligent reporting so we could tell what’s going on.

I’m not holding my breath.

Joe Doakes

Reporters are supposed to be relentlessly curious, and to try to understand the things they report about. And on many issues they are – including, with some reporters, at some times, on the issue of firearms and 2nd Amendment rights.

Students at the University of Wisconson’s Stout Campus must prove they’ve absorbed the PC narrative to Big Brother’s satisfaction before being granted a diploma:

In order to fulfill the requirement, students must complete at least six credits from a list of approved courses that address at least two out of four categories: Global Self-Awareness, Global Knowledge, Global Viewpoint, and Global Engagement.

“Global self-awareness” courses, for instance, focus on embracing the “values of diverse others,” helping students to “develop appreciation for diverse voices and stories and the contributions of cultures and countries different from one’s own.”

The “global knowledge” goal, meanwhile, addresses “the deeply interconnected nature of the world,” with courses exploring concepts like how “the impact of globalized capitalism and neoliberalism on economic systems, inter and intra-societal stratification, civil and human rights, and sustainability” form the “historical roots” of inequities around the world.

The “global viewpoint” category aims to introduce students to different cultural and historical perspectives, while the “global engagement” element teaches students to “take effective critical action” on the basis of their new knowledge by “contributing to positive change in globally diverse, interconnected, and interdependent natural, social, and business environments.”

The Feminist Business School, founded by Evergreen State College graduate Jennifer Armbrust, teaches that capitalism is an “economy that values masculine traits” such as “meritocracy,” “competition,” and “individualism.” The California-based site recently launched two more online courses to coach aspiring businesswomen on how to “topple the patriarchy” and promote a more “feminist economy.”

Shunning the “profit seeking motive” of traditional commerce, the Feminist Business School advocates that businesswomen adopt more “feminine traits” such as “gratitude,” “intimacy,” and “connecting with nature.”

Part 1 (they call them “Act 1” and “Act 2”, and so on, which is far fron the twee-est, most precious and pretentious thing about TAL) is a story with, by Public Radio standards, a real “Man Bites Dog” is a nice apertif – a story about a young feminist Youtube “star” who discovers – try not to be shocked – that her fellow travelers on the left are really really intolerant of dissent. Give the whole thing a listen.

Part 2? After all the gumflapping this week about Republicans’ in Minnesota and their relationship with Muslims – including my own go-arounds with members of the GOP over this issue – “Act 2” goes over the problems a staunchly pro-gun legislator in one of Louisiana’s most conservative parishes had when she proposed a bijll that would have banned realistic replica guns in schools. The bill was neither an attack on the 2nd Amendment nor an especially good idea (it should be a local ordinance, not a state statute for starters), but the tendency of people to get wrapped around the axle over surface terminology without really understanding an issue is pretty astounding. The TAL reporter, by the way, did a credible job of explaining the pro-gun side (although I don’t suspect she understands it all that well).

Arthur J. Jones, 70, of Lyons, is the lone candidate on the March 20 Republican primary ticket for the seat that includes Western Springs, La Grange and parts of southwestern Chicago. Jones, a former member of the American National Socialist Workers Party, has run for political office several times in the past but has never made it past the primary stage in the 3rd District.

He may get on the ballot as a “Republican” because there’s no other GOP challenger in the Illinois’ stultifyingly blue 3rd District. The IL GOP has been fighting against the guy for years; I have no idea what the rules are to run as any given party on a ballot in Illinois, and it’s for damn sure the Chicago Tribune isn’t going to explain them; they got their headline: Holocaust denier likely to appear on ballot for GOP for Chicago-area congressional seat”.

A thousand of us could descend on Cedar Riverside and plaster the place an inch deep in “All People Are Created Equal” flyers and it wouldn’t get a second on the news, anywhere. And I’m tempted to try it, if only to cover an entire neighborhood in paper.